Since we spent longer than planned waiting for new visas in Hong Kong, we only had two full days around Yangshuo, and so we strapped on our hiking shoes and headed into the beautiful countryside.
People in the area have clearly come to the conclusion that making money from tourists is much more pleasant than subsistence farming, and everywhere we went, people shouted “Bamboo, bamboo” along our path, in the hopes that we might choose to float down the river for a few hundred yuan in their bamboo raft. The verbs to “bamboo” and to “wa-ke”, i.e. to walk, the opposite of to “bamboo”, seem to have become a part of the language in this part of Guangxi, a reflection perhaps of the high concentration of foreign tourists in Yangshuo (although the neon lights and deafening music on the high street come nightfall prove that there are lots of Chinese tourists as well). Many a conversation in Chinese went along the lines of, “Do you want to bamboo?” “No, we’re hiking”, “Oh, you want to wa-ke. Do you want to bamboo tomorrow?”
We were there the weekend after 清明节, the Tomb Sweeping Festival, so the hills were filled not only with tourists but also with people visiting the tombs of deceased relatives to 扫墓, which involved placing incense, offerings of paper money, baijiu, cigarettes and other things useful in the afterlife, and above all, setting off lots and lots of firecrackers. When I first came to China and heard a salvo of firecrackers go off somewhere in the distance, my first reaction was always “gunshots”. After two years here, my first reaction is usually “wedding party”, but really, I’ve learned over time that loud bangs in the distance could mean anything, and I’ve even learned to walk right past them without covering my ears and with only a slight lingering fear of losing a foot. Acclimatisation successful.
Pictures below are from our wa-ke along the Li River, and our wa-ke up and (finally giving in) bamboo down the Yulong River.
View from the bank of the Li River
Freshly swept tombs strewn with paper money for the deceased and red shells from firecrackers set off to scare away evil spirits
Yulong River
Smoke rises from a mountain behind the fields where a salvo of firecrackers has just been set off
A bamboo raft floats down the Yulong River
Your photos are beautiful. I visited China a few years ago, and Yangshuo was one of the most beautiful parts of my trip. But I was still using film at the time, and somehow by mistake I packed the rolls in my checked luggage for the trip home, so the photos didn’t come out very well. So I’m enjoying yours even more!